Secondhand Smoke
by FallingMirrors
Summary: [She seemed both motherly and vulnerable and whilst Violet felt a little intimidated by her elaborate appearance, the woman tugged on her heartstrings.] Violet meets Nora Montgomery in person and the two bond over a series of encounters. (Warning: unconventional pairing.)


**Author's Note:** Hi, everyone! Considering how I've recently binge-watched American Horror Story, I've decided to delve into some fanfiction focusing on two of my favourite characters in the first season. I know it's a bit of a weird pairing, but I really like unconventional pairings. Not to mention the fact that I've been trying to do a bit of therapeutic writing recently and these two characters seem like they have both fluff and angst potential (perrrrfect.) If you'd like to give this pairing a try, go on ahead. If you're not one for unconventional pairings then that's fine too, but I can honestly live without hearing about it in any reviews. Enjoy!

**Warnings:** Girl/girl pairing, probably some angst and horror later on considering the nature of the show, swearing, age gap (a really, really big one if you properly think about it, but they're ghosts so whatever.)

**Disclaimer:** I clearly don't own American Horror Story.

_Secondhand Smoke_

Alone, bored, and in darkness, Violet sat on the stairs leading down to the basement, her knees pulled up to her chest and her pointed chin atop them. She knew that if she truly wanted to, she could join her parents. However, it seemed that these days they were so enrapt with an eternal baby that they couldn't offer her any variation of conversation that _wasn't _to do with a 'new-sounding gurgle' that her baby brother had made. Her _dead_ baby brother. It was sad, really - she knew that he would never develop past newborn, but her parents couldn't seem to grasp this. Well, she had a feeling that perhaps her father did, but he graciously ignored his common sense to keep his wife happy. After they had died, it seemed that their marriage had never been better. Violet couldn't say the same about improvements regarding her own life. She felt so often like an outsider, a castoff. To some extent, she had chosen her fate. Almost everyone else in this house had met their end not by their own choosing, but by someone else's - Tate's, in many cases.

The memory of him sent a shiver down her spine. Although she knew it was wrong (she _knew _about the things he had done) it was true that Tate had seemed her only ally in this house, and now she didn't even have him for companionship after she had banished him from her life. In a way, she found herself _missing _him - and that bothered her greatly. Did she miss him, or did she miss the idea of having a relationship with someone? After all, the only people she really came into contact with in this house were her parents and Moira. The old maid was the closest thing to a friend she had, but even her contact with the woman was limited. It seemed to be unspoken knowledge that Moira's loyalty lay with her parents and their baby, and with Violet keeping her distance as much as possible, in Moira's mind, the girl had chosen her fate.

A rattle somewhere at the bottom of the stairs pulled her from her melancholic thoughts. She knew that Tate would often watch her from the shadows even though he knew better than to attempt to contact her, and even though most of the time she could put it out of her mind, today she felt particularly enveloped in angst and wished he would just leave her alone. So (without much conviction, granted) she raised her voice to the lurking shadows of the basement and gave a typically teenaged groan of, "Fuck off, Tate." The rattling, however, persisted. Irked, she stood up and went further down the stairs into the heart of the basement to investigate, a little crease between her brows. If it was that bitch, Hayden, she wasn't sure she could convince herself to be civil.

The basement was a dank, dark place and if she wasn't so used to it, she could understand how it could be a little unsettling to most people. However, the spirits in the house seemed to rather prefer it to the rest of the property (with the exception of her parents and Moira) as it was generally understood that they wouldn't appear to each other down there - it was a space they went when they wanted to be left alone.

As she wound her way further into the basement, the noise she heard appeared to be accompanied by distressed sobbing, and she hesitated before peeking around the corner of one of the large, stone arches. When her vision adjusted, she was met with the sight of a tall, extravagantly dressed blonde woman, the golden curls of her hair falling in a halo around her head, only to be disrupted by a messy, open wound (apparently the exit hole of a bullet.) Her trembling, bejeweled hands were tugging impatiently at the drawer of an old, antique dressing table and she sobbed in frustration as she tried and failed to open it. The noise grating on her ears and (not that she would ever admit it) the sight of the poor woman pathetically trying to manage such an impossible task grating on her heart, with a deep sigh, Violet decided to intervene.

"Uh... Hey." Although it wasn't the most eloquent start to a sentence, it had the desired effect as the woman jerked to a halt and span to look at her, her crystalline blue eyes quivering with unshed tears and her makeup creating messy tracks down her cheeks with those that had already fallen. Violet recognised her as Nora Montgomery, a spirit whose existence she was aware of, but one she never seemed to see very often. Although she was not as old as her mother, she had to be around a decade older than Violet. However, she had a girlish prettiness to her and something innocent which lined her face. She seemed both motherly and vulnerable and whilst Violet felt a little intimidated by her elaborate appearance, the woman tugged on her heartstrings. She seemed to be so confused and lost, so distanced from both her own time and their current one.

Violet cringed. Now that she had gotten the woman's attention, she realised that she had perhaps made a terrible mistake. She herself wasn't overly sociable, after all. "I, um... I'm pretty sure that table is locked." She could have kicked herself.

Pulling nimble fingers back towards her chest, the woman glanced at the dressing table, before turning back to the girl in front of her and giving a weak smile. "I believe you might be right," she admitted in a low, husky, yet feminine voice, a little battered from her crying. "How silly of me." It should have been a lighthearted comment, but in light of the circumstances, Violet didn't smile back. Instead, she raised a brow.

"What were you looking for, anyway?"

Nora tapped red fingernails against the cracked lacquer of the tabletop. "My jewelry box," she responded. "I can't think of why someone would have brought my table down here, considering what's inside of it. All my jewels..." Seemingly distracted, she traced the carved patterns in the furniture. "All my things..." She gestured around the room, where the furniture that Violet assumed had once been in her bedroom had been dumped. A wardrobe, dressers, an old wooden chair. She felt terrible for the woman, especially taking into consideration the likelihood that all of her belongings would join Nora's if a family ever did manage to stick out the hauntings and live in the house permanently.

"Well, there's a box of old keys out there," Violet interrupted the woman's musings with a nod of her head towards the front of the basement, closer to the stairs. "Maybe if you saw the key in that you would recognise it." Instead of moving to action, Nora merely looked at her quizzically, so Violet took it upon herself to retrieve the box with a short, "Wait there a minute."

The teenager crossed the basement once again, glancing around a little before her gaze fell upon the old, dusty cardboard box filled with keys. She guessed that one of the previous owners must have compiled it after removing all of the Montgomerys' old furniture from the main house. She returned to the woman who, as asked, had remained in her place, fidgeting slightly. "Here it is," Violet announced with a little smile, inspiring the woman to return the expression. She rested the box on the woman's dressing table and stepped back, allowing Nora to come forward and root through the keys herself.

For some time, Nora didn't seem to be making much progress and apparently she was growing frustrated again, her hands beginning to tremble a little. It was then that Violet decided to intervene again. "Here," she murmured, stepping forward again and lifting the box, "If we scatter them out like this," she illustrated her sentence by gently pouring the keys across the tabletop, "You might be able to see a little better." Paying close attention to her actions, Nora's eyes scoured the now cluttered surface. "What does it look like?" the girl questioned.

"Polished brass, to match the lock," the woman responded quickly. "Well... I suspect it should be a little more tarnished now," she corrected herself with displeasure and narrowed her eyes towards the dusty box, causing Violet to hide a small, amused smile behind her sleeve. "I had tied a little dusty pink ribbon around it," she added, furrowing her brow in concentration as she continued to search.

Glancing at the collection lying closer to her, Violet's eyes suddenly locked on a possible candidate. "Could this be it?" she asked, lifting the little key and trying it in the lock of the table without asking for an answer. The key slid in easily, clicking as it unlocked the drawer and Violet glanced to the woman, stepping back a little to allow her to open it. Nora did so, carefully, as though handling something sacred.

Violet peered inside the drawer as it was slowly pulled forward, her eyes falling upon a small, opal jewelry box. Nora picked up the box, glancing up at her with a heart-stopping smile. Stepping backwards, the older ghost perched delicately on top of a dusty mattress in the corner, gently placing the box in her lap. Suddenly feeling awkward and as though she was intruding upon something very personal, Violet began to turn to make her way out of the room. She had helped the woman find what she was looking for, after all, and she would probably forget all about the strange teenaged girl in less than an hour, knowing her tendency to get confused. Violet guessed she could just chalk the whole experience up as her good deed for the day (...or maybe the week. She wasn't so sure about spending so much time around the other spirits.) Even though she was strictly speaking an introvert, she felt a little hollow at the idea of leaving the other woman and returning to her own, personal moping, but she had a feeling she wasn't needed anymore.

The girl hadn't even reached the archway leading out of the particular segment of the basement, however, before a voice behind her called out. "Where are you going?" Rotating on her heel, Violet saw that the woman had halted completely in opening the box, her shimmering eyes fixed upon her intently.

"Oh, I... Well, I guess you don't need me anymore. I mean... You probably don't want me to bother you," Violet blurted out uneasily in a failed attempt to be blasé, her short fingernails digging into the sleeve of her sweater.

Nora waved one manicured hand in a dismissive gesture, the other clutching her opal box securely. "Nonsense. If it wasn't for you, I might never have found this." Violet wasn't so sure about that. Surely the other ghost had at least _some _common sense. She shuffled from one foot to the other, hovering by the arch. With an easy smile, the blonde woman gestured for her to come over and patted space beside her on the mattress invitingly. "Come here. Let me show you."

Hesitantly, Violet stepped closer to the woman, sitting down rather stiffly on the dusty mattress next to her. She watched over Nora's shoulder as she unlatched the little box, lifting the lid to reveal a tangle of gold, silver, and precious stones that the girl couldn't even begin to put a name to. The older ghost dipped her hand inside the expensive chains, draping numerous pendants, chokers, and bracelets across her lap, separating them carefully as she did so, holding them up to admire them so that their gleam illuminated her pale cheek. Violet watched her dig through her assortment of jewels, the woman having seemingly forgotten her presence. At least, that was how it appeared until Nora glanced up at her with a coy smile.

"Pretty, aren't they?" Violet nodded in honest agreement with a smile of her own. Pale, nimble fingers fluttered across the surface of the box and with a little, "Ah," from their owner, the woman extracted another of her treasures. The item Nora had been searching for turned out to be a small, droplet-shaped earring, constructed of golden framework encasing a generously sized diamond. She lifted the specimen, brushing Violet's hair out of her face with her other hand, whilst holding the earring up to her cheek, bright eyes raking across her features to see how the jewelry suited her. "They fit you well," the woman commented. "The diamonds make your brown eyes glow." With the touch of a cold hand, Nora gently threaded the earring through the girl's lobe before quickly finding its partner, adding it to the other ear. "Such a beautiful girl," the older ghost smiled benignly, brushing Violet's stubborn curtain of hair back once again to better admire the jewels on her.

"Oh," Violet ducked her head, suddenly feeling flustered and exposed. "I'm not, really. I'm not good with... hair and makeup, or anything like that. Not like you are," she admitted with a smile and a shake of her head.

"Well, that doesn't matter," Nora responded. "True beauty is there whether we choose to accentuate it or not." She seemed distracted for a moment, her eyes wandering from Violet's, straying around the room, before snapping back to her. "I'd like you to keep those," she stated with her familiar, strained smile, "As a thank you for helping me." One bejeweled hand reached over to cover Violet's own pale, narrow one. The girl, however, was quick to lift her hand away and remove the earrings.

"I couldn't do that," she said quickly. "They're yours. I mean, they're kind of too nice for me anyway. It's not exactly like I have anywhere to wear them." Placing said jewelry next to her on the mattress, she stood up, feeling suddenly stifled and vulnerable. She walked to the arch leading into the main basement before turning and glancing back at Nora's bewildered face. "I'm glad you found your things," she said instead of a goodbye, with an attempted smile. With that, she turned her back on the strange woman, making her way upstairs and out of the basement, into the warm glow of the house upstairs where her parents were going about their daily business.

She hoped to put Nora Montgomery out of her mind, feeling at odds with herself after their encounter. No-one had looked at her so intensely since Tate and she felt as though she had forgotten what it was like. When her mother asked what the matter was, she only shook her head and pretended not to know what she was talking about. Moira's shrewd gaze seemed to lock on her and that made her feel a little uneasy.

It was not until later that Violet returned to her bedroom, having spent the remainder of the evening distracting herself by caring for her baby brother, being perhaps more active in his life in those past few hours than she had ever been before. When she did retire to the sanctuary of her room (all her familiar things around her, having been left as they were when she died) her eyes locked themselves on an unusual sight upon her bed. There, placed delicately on her pillow, were Nora's earrings along with a small scrap of paper adorned with looping handwriting stating only, _'Thank you. - N' _

Violet could not stop the small smile tugging at the corners of her lips as she put the jewelry on in resignation, a peculiar warmth fluttering in her stomach and the note clutched in her hand, the smell of lavender soap and some sort of floral perfume filling her nose as she curled up on top of her covers. "You're welcome," she murmured to the perhaps not-quite-empty room.


End file.
